Easy Choices
by I am Best
Summary: The Master, his TARDIS, and the end of the universe.


The Master looked at his hands. Blood under the nails, soaked into the crevices of his palms. Heart lines and life lines in sharp relief. Some of the blood was his, some wasn't. He didn't know of which there was more.

His TARDIS was dark, screens blank, rotor quiet. It felt dead. The only light came in silver and stark from outside, where matter pounded to dust by the mercies of space swirled and danced, reflecting the blue-cold light of stars long dead. The Master had left the door open, and the Silver Devastation poured in behind him.

He dragged himself to the console and hit any buttons, any levers, he could reach. Anything. It stayed dark. It stayed quiet. The blood he smeared on its white surfaces cooled.

Everything was quiet, the Master realized. His mind, too. He couldn't hear the drums.

Slumping against the console, he closed his eyes and focused down, inward, anywhere. Not for Time Lords or the Doctor, but for his TARDIS. While he never had the repartee with his TARDIS as the Doctor did, birds of a mad, blue feather as they were, the Master still had a connection. Though the shape had changed throughout the years, the thefts, the modifications, it was still his TARDIS. Jumping ship to ship through the time stream that ran in its heart and the hearts of all TARDISes, it followed its Master. If he couldn't die, neither could it.

Oh, but it was weak. The Silver Devastation had nothing but broken galaxies intermingled. Beyond, so close to the end, the universe was growing dark. No life, no thought. No Time Lords nor Dalaks nor Could've Been Kings nor any of the war and its monsters, which was why he had hidden it here before hiding himself. No stimulation, no reason to do anything but sleep.

The Master tried to coax it out from deep within the time stream where it could dream this universe into the next. _Please_. He couldn't be alone again at the end of everything.

 _Please_.

It stirred, languid, tired.

 _I need you._

It tried. It did, he could feel it, but there just wasn't enough energy left. The Master, with fingers broken and bloodied, prised the console top open against all its mechanical fail-safes and defunct locks. He saw only faint swirls of gold in its heart.

With no others but the Doctor's in the universe now, this would be his TARDIS's last body. Though the Master hadn't wanted it at first, didn't know where it came from, it refused to leave him and now, he refused to let it.

If it didn't have the energy to wake up on its own, he would have to give it some.

Heart lines, fate lines, blood lines - there was too much history in his hands, in his head. A heart beat rhythm had defined the Master in this body, in this short, short life. A man was simply his memories, a Time Lord even more so. The Master would carry the memories, but not in these hands. It was an easy choice to make. Suicide to survive.

He twisted and bent until a sharp edge of metal came loose. A new set of regenerations, a new countdown cut into lines in his wrists, blood to wash away blood. One - war. Two - fear. Three - madness.

Instead of explosive, he needed concentrated. No time to focus on his next body, he'd take what nature gave him. The regeneration energy flowed, gold and red like Prydonian robes, like Gallifrey under binary suns. Like Gallifrey when it burned and burned and burned, looped a hundred thousand times.

A creature gone feral from its long, lonely wait, his TARDIS came back to him slowly, inch by wary inch. He felt it pulling himself through the cuts, through the blood dripping down to sizzle and steam on the TARDIS's core.

The time rotor started without prompting, filled the room with its distinct wheeze. The Master passed out.

When she woke up, dizzy and ill and unfamiliar to herself, the Master dragged her body up by the central column, closed the console, then fell over into darkness.

She came to again in the zero room, and for a terrified moment thought she failed. The silence was too much, reeked of death and nothingness, an eternal solitude without even her drums. She stumbled out, saw lights, felt the movement of time and air.

Her TARDIS was a constant presence in the back of her mind once more, pleased and feline as it curled into its favorite spot.

The Master smiled as she stroked the walls, the rails, the buttons and levers and screens so recently inactive. They hummed with life.

Four - not alone.


End file.
